Are Your Clients Ready for Video? Are You?

It wasn't that long ago when the high price of making long distance calls was your client's biggest concern with their phone system. There was never an issue with quality or reliability for the PBX - clients knew they were paying a lot, but they were getting a lot in return. The benefits were tangible, and both IT and end users got pretty full utility from the system. In that regard, the world was a simpler place then.

Of course, IP has changed that in many ways for businesses, and for those of you serving as a channel, your business has needed to change as well. The above scenario became moot with IP PBX, as long distance calls made over the LAN pretty much went away. Your job probably became a bit more demanding in terms of interoperability issues, and optimizing IP PBX performance on your client's network. However, you were still dealing mainly with voice, and before adding UC, there wasn't much need to think of telephony in the broader context of a multi-modal environment.

We all know where UC has taken that notion, and in the spirit of my earlier posts in this series, I want to focus here on video. Even with IP, the value proposition for voice is clear. The costs may be coming down, but the utility remains high, even if traffic is migrating to modes other than the desk phone. Video is another story, and needs to be positioned differently, especially if you have thoughts on how to add value for your clients.

Video's value is harder to articulate, especially with so many free-for-all options floating around online. It's pretty fair to say that the higher the degree of network control that IT has with video, the more they will value it. Every business would love to have immersive telepresence, but it's way too costly, so compromises must be made to find an acceptable middle ground between cost and benefit.

This is where the channel is in a great position to add value, especially if trying to define the role of video within a UC deployment. There are plenty of standalone cloud-based video services, and you'll need to navigate clients through these various offerings. In that regard, you need to be ready for video just as much as your clients. Here are three considerations that both of you will need to address:

1. What's driving video for the business? Is the client asking about video, or are you doing the evangelizing? Voice will always be a "need" for business, but video is generally more of a "want." We've survived to this point without it, so what has changed? You can play a valuable role here to help clients understand this, especially if you've already been through this with them in shifting from TDM to IP telephony.
   
   
2. How is video going to be used? Nobody knows the answer initially, but some basic groundwork needs to be laid in terms of who will own video in the business. If the primary use will be one-on-one personal sessions, then video can be totally desktop-driven, in which case the end users will own it. You could be fully laissez faire and let them get their own applications, or move up to a hosted video service that provides a common platform for everyone. Conversely, if your client really wants video for collaboration, then you need to steer them to a more network-centric solution, and on that probably integrates with UC and will be owned by IT, not end users.
   
   
3. What's the ROI? Definitely harder to do than with telephony, but addressing the above two considerations will provide a framework for developing an acceptable ROI model. In this case, your value-add is cumulative. If you can work through these considerations with the client, the ROI should not be that difficult to formulate, especially if you have some best practices to fall back on from existing video clients.

For most clients, video is still a big unknown, so you should be able to approach them from a position of strength. Voice is quickly becoming a commodity, but video still has a high perceived value, which means that even with a basic competency, you have a good opportunity to build longer-term bridges with your clients. The considerations in this post provide a starting point for you to build those bridges while the window is still open.